A Journey Into Films, Beginning at a Bronx Community Center

David Gonzalez/The New York Times

After three weeks in upstate New York, Alex Barrios was excited about coming back to the city. The sight of the Empire State Building, its shiny spire peeking over the jagged suburban landscape, set his heart racing.

He was home. Again. And on a bus. Again.

The two events are not unrelated. He was returning to the Bronx for the premiere of “The We and the I,” a film by Michel Gondry that features him and more than two dozen young people who portray - more or less - themselves. Set on a bus ride home on the last day of school, it is a heartfelt and honest peek into their lves and loves, dreams and fears, joys and tragedies. Filmed almost entirely inside a bus, it’s like “The Exterminating Angel” meets “Cooley High” on wheels, while bouncy ’80s rap music plays in the background.

It could just as easily be “Long Day’s Journey Into Hunts Point,” since that Bronx peninsula was the backdrop to many scenes. Yet unlike persistent portrayals of that area as some drug- and sex-saturated hellhole populated by thugs and ragamuffins, the movie treats young people from there like, well, actual young people. They laugh, bully, bicker, cry and boast. It ends on a note of mystery and hope, with a couple huddled in a dark park, as Manhattan’s fuzzy skyline twinkles in the distance.

“These are the things that happen with everyday teenagers,” said Mr. Barrios, who just turned 22. “People have this misconception the Bronx is this really bad place, but it has as much culture and respect as any other place. Some people hear things and take it a differe! nt way. This point of this film was to show the Bronx from our perspective because we actually live there.”

His path to the movie was as circuitous as the route covered by the imaginary BX66 bus of the film. While in high school he had gone to the Point, a community center on Manida Street, to use the music room, practicing bass with his metal rock band.

A few years ago, Mr. Gondry approached the organization to see if its young people would be interested in doing a workshop to help him develop a new film. Word went out. Mr. Barrios jumped in.

“Why not” he said. “I always had an interest in acting. I used to do little monologues with my friends. We made fake movie trailers for fun. Let me try to do this seriously and take it to another level.”

The stories the young people traded in the workshop became the basis for the script. And many of them were invited to join the cast. Mr. Barrios wound up being in the movie in more ways than one not only does his character have a crucial scene at the end, but his actual sketches were also used in a notebook toted by another teenager who played an artist.

Mr. Barrios â€" a gangly young man who is as quiet in real life as he was in the movie - takes his art seriously. Mr. Gondry took him seriously too, since he cast him in a second movie, bringing him over to France for the filming.

“I play an incarnation of Jesus,” Mr. Barrios said. “A flashy Jesus, like a Michael Jackson Jesus. He put me in a rocket ship that flew around a church. It was pretty crazy.”

And then he returned to the Bronx, where he lived with his father in a housing project. The “situation,” as he calls it, has not been easy. His mother died two years ago from a stroke. He wants to change things, so he looked for work - at drugstores, restaurants, delivery services, but came up empty.

That’s not crazy. Just common.

Some friends said he should ask the filmmaker for another role. While! Mr. Barr! ios is grateful for being in two movies, he is taking life step by step, doing what needs to be done. He has a plan. It takes time.

“I’m not going to hassle the guy,” he said. “I got my foot in the door. Now it’s about how you walk through.”

Instead, he enrolled last month in a Job Corps program in Calicoon, N.Y., about two hours from the Bronx. There, he is learning culinary arts. He hopes to return to the city, get a job and keep on drawing, playing music and looking for acting work.

“The way I see it, Job Corps or working on a film with Gondry, it’s just a job that needs to be done,” he said. “As long as I’m focused on the task at hand, I’ll do it. It’s no different from sweeping an entire hallway. I tend to work a lot. It’s all in the plan.”

So it’s back to Calicoon.

“It’s a strange place,” he said. “I’m used to seeing the city, the buildings and the cracks in the sidewalk. Now I see grass and trees. I can finally see stars in the sy.”

And, perhaps someday, one in the mirror.